I've submitted two reviews to the staff for evaluation. Pending Sana's thoughts on publishing I dunno when they will appear on the main site, and I'm not too keen to post thread reviews personally.

Given that I've been out of the reviewing scheme for a while I was going to randomly play levels, though I am open to requests if users or mappers out there have a pressing concern for a particular mappack. An no, don't ask me about Redeem Your Space .

Here's the thread with the translation:http://forums.beyondunreal.com/showthread.php?t=198546It's only the first episode and I haven't played it, but potentially the pack isn't so big and it's actually a whole bunch of smaller episodes under one banner, in which case episode 1 could be deserving of a standalone review.

I'll try and hunt down that mutator which purports to translate the whole pack.

Bit of a bummer. Although the comments so far from people indicate that it does make the pack more playable, as the messages are now understandable enough to identify where to go next, which switch to press, the locations of hidden things etc.Assuming the messages are just gameplay hints and flavourtext rather than actual story exposition, these first 28 levels should be eligible for a review.

EDIT:I was just looking at some screenies for RyS, and I notice a lot of stargates. Is this a prequel/sequel to the stargate packs?

EDIT: I just went hunting for info on the stargate packs and apparently there's at least three different unrelated packs all released at different times over the past 10 years and now my head hurts

About StarGate: There's a very small map pack which you can find at OldUnreal.com. It's pretty bad. This shouldn't be reviewed. As far as I remember, there's also an unfinished mod. I doubt it's suitable for singleplayer and shouldn't be reviewed. And then there is Stargate Talisman by Lion(LS). This should be reviewed. But you have to watch out. There are 2 versions around (besides a coop fix, which you shouldn't use for singleplayer either). When I checked last time, the one at OldUnreal.com was the outdated one. The newer version has an own HUD and another map was added (or finished). You can download it here (but don't use that link in your review). Don't play it with OldSkool (HUD gets replaced). You can find the translation here. It's done by Leo almost a year ago.

About Redeem your Space: It's not related to StarGate. It just uses star gates to connect maps. I think it could be reviewed episode by episode. Each episode has a hidden map. As far as I remember the first episode ends with a Skaarj Queen. I've never played it with translations (since the translation was never finished). Maps are made for coop, but they are suitable for singleplayer. Usually a path forks but only one path will have a switch (or there's a town and in only one house you'll find the key). My main complaint is that RyS as a whole uses too many Krall.

As for RyS, reviewing it episode by episode is wrong because these "episodes" are clearly parts of a whole. If episodes can be played separately and are prepped to be played separately, they should be reviewed as such. See: Zora Eps. But in case of RyS where each ep is started by finishing the previous one, gameplay balance and story makes it a whole. RyS should be reviewed as a whole.

I'll look into the StarGate map packs as soon as I review Illhaven and Alin'Gar which take priority for me now.As for RyS translation, I'll nudge my Czech acquaintance from Irc, a certain Sanky and try to push things forward.

I am the Unreal archivist and historian. If you have something from the past of Unreal that I don't have, do tell.

Bit of a bummer. Although the comments so far from people indicate that it does make the pack more playable, as the messages are now understandable enough to identify where to go next, which switch to press, the locations of hidden things etc.Assuming the messages are just gameplay hints and flavourtext rather than actual story exposition, these first 28 levels should be eligible for a review.

I have two different versions of Bob's RYS translation mutator, one dating from September of 2011, and one dating from June or July of 2012. I think the Dropbox link above is for the newer 2012 version.

In that post, he says something about having provided machine translations for roughly 90% of the maps. I don't know if the figure of "28 maps" translated refers to the older 2011 version or not. I do know that RYS has a ton of maps - the "Core" of the game is 46 numbered maps, and there is also an intro and an outro and an epilogue, plus 8 additional secret levels (which are some of the most memorable), for a total of about 57 maps. And there are also 8 "wormhole" maps, which I think are used for transitions between maps and don't have much in the way of playability, if I'm recalling correctly.

It's been a while since I played through the pack, and for much of it I didn't have the benefit of Bob's mutator, which I think I discovered when I only had a few levels left to play before finishing the pack. So my memory is not very sharp about everything, but my sense is that the more recent version of Bob's mutator should provide translation for more than 28 maps (which by my count would be less than 50% of all the maps, as opposed to "90%"). I also seemed to recall that there aren't a ton of translator events in the pack as a whole, so it's not like there's a lot of elaborate text-based storytelling going on, that one would be missing out on by just having the machine translations from the mutator. That said, I do remember that Leo's translations for the first 6 or so maps were of much better quality, and I think those early maps might contain more story information and set the scene for the whole pack. So it's definitely worth using Leo's translations wherever they are available, and for the other maps, Bob's mutator should be plenty adequate to get you through the pack. (I remember reading one user's comment about Leo's translations for the 6 early maps, saying that they provided enough background for him to be able to finish the rest of the pack without any further translations. And Bob's mutator is certainly better than no translation at all. There are sections that are still incomprehensible, but more often than not you can glean some helpful clues or get the general gist of what is being said.)

A final note -- I don't know if it's just me, since Redeem Your Space has a lot of strong supporters, but I actually had more fun playing through the Herdcoop pack... Anyway, I hope both of these mammoth map packs get reviewed here eventually!

TheIronKnuckle wrote:Otherwise, I've been dying for a Revelations Pt.1 review ever since it came out.

I have this downloaded but the forum thread doesn't have the check mark indicating that it is finished so I always assumed that it wasn't. I can give it another playthrough prior to playing since its been awhile.

On RYS: My point of view is that the pack is one long campaign. Regardless, reviewing one translated episode and then waiting indefinitely for a translated follow up does not sound so great an idea.